Inspiring Older Readers

posted on 12 Apr 2016

Narratives of a Negress by Kara Walker

When I found this book I had no idea who Kara Walker was and I didn't recognise the style or any of the artworks represented in this particular collection. However, none of that seemed too important because what I saw as I flipped through the pages absolutely blew me away.

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Walker is an African American artist born in 1969 and still living and working in New York. Her body of work addresses a range of uncomfortable topics - slavery, race, gender, sexuality and violence and she does this through a range of different media, including watercolour, pen and ink and paper engineering. Indeed, it is her extraordinary use of paper silhouettes that create tableaux across whole walls and complete rooms that first brought her work to wider public attention.

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Narratives of a Negress published in 2007 introduces us to Walker's silhouettes and to her watercolour and printing techniques which she uses to tell the terrible story of slavery in the Antebellum south of the USA. The art works tell a historical tale of capture and deportation but the really telling material documents and comments on the subsequent exploitation of black women at the hands of the slave masters.

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It's a tale of sexual abuse and violence. It's also, inevitably, a tale of hypocrisy and inhumanity. None of this makes for easy viewing but I was struck by how Walker manages to imbue the victims of exploitation with a sort of fortitude and moral dignity even when they are enduring even the most degrading treatment.

Any artist dealing with issues as emotionally loaded as these will attract criticism as well as praise. She has been accused of confirming or conforming to stereotypes of the black, female slave and of offering these stories up for the purpose of the white gaze. While I can understand where some of this criticism is coming from, for me at least the nature and power of the story she tells is unambiguous and its motivation clear.

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I very much admire the silhouettes but I think I actually prefer the painting, drawing and printing which  demonstrate a fabulous use of colour and have a real power on the paper. Her work lends itself fabulously well to book illustration and it's interesting to see that she has also gone in that direction.

Walker had a small exhibition in the UK in 2013 which I was completely unaware of but I hope that someone has the gumption to curate another soon - and hopefully outside of London so that some of us have a chance of seeing it.

 

Terry Potter

April 2016

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